Park Ridge’s favorite daughter gets caught in another less-emotional-than-it-looks moment. She still can’t catch a break from the camera. And she can’t even get into an ultra-Orthodox newspaper.

By Whet Moser

Published May 9, 2011

In the immediately iconic picture of the president receiving updates from the briefing room from the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, Hillary Clinton was shot seemingly reflecting on the gravity of the moment, as Joe Biden was captured looking like Joe Biden looks at everything:

What happened? Allergies. (Via the Daily Intel.) Not “the mystery of what’s happening off camera is captured wholly in the expression on Hillary’s face” or “10 years of tension and heartache and anger in Hillary’s face,” as described in an oddball WWD roundup.

I’d like to call latent sexism, but that story was most similar to the excruciating Edmund Muskie “crying” moment in the 1972 campaign, the biggest story in the history of non-stories. David Broder described the candidate with “tears streaming down his face,” which would surely have been an unforgettable moment if Broder hadn’t later written that “it is unclear whether Muskie did cry.”

Speaking of sexism, the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Der Tzitungcropped out Hillary Clinton from the photo. That’s one way to settle it, even if it does remove the mystery of allergies.